Myers Fights Out of the Rough

The lingering effect of a mishap in Japan more than a year ago will keep Terry-Jo Myers out of the Valley of the Stars Championship at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale.

And that is depressing for the 1997 tournament champion.

“It is extremely difficult not to play Oakmont and it’s for such a sad reason,” Myers said.

A sad, dangerous--but also hilarious--reason.

In November 1997, Myers was winding up her most successful year on the LPGA tour at the Japan Classic in Chibi.

She and two other golfers ordered pizza and decided to run across the street to a bookstore while waiting.

“I almost made it across and saw traffic barreling at us,” Myers said.

“I started to run and my right leg tripped me up and I stumbled into the curb and fell into a light pole.”

Her friends were doubled over laughing, but Myers realized by the next morning she had injured her back. She played in pain through the Sara Lee Classic in May.

Myers, 36, was the defending Sara Lee champion, yet she couldn’t hit a seven-iron 120 yards.

“I really broke down physically,” she said. “Something major was wrong with my body.”

Five weeks off didn’t help and Myers eventually had surgery for a herniated disk in October.

Recovery was going well until she had another setback that could make “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

“On Christmas morning, I sat in a chair that had just been repaired and fell right through it,” she said.

She tried to play in the Naples LPGA Memorial on Jan. 21 and experienced acute pain on every swing. Now Myers is resigned to not playing for at least another month.

“I won’t even hit balls until March,” she said.

If anyone can bounce back, it’s Myers, who has long suffered from the painful bladder disease interstitial cystitis.

A new drug kept her symptom-free in 1997 and she won $313,015--more than five times the winnings of any of her first 11 years on the LPGA tour.

She earned only $38,983 last year and her best finish was 24th at the City of Hope Myrtle Beach Classic in April.

“I thought ’97 was like the beginning of my second career,” she said. “I’d put everything behind me and was proving I could play.

“Now I have to prove it to myself all over again. I made huge strides in the last two weeks of physical therapy.”

Myers’ goal is to make her 1999 debut in the Welch’s/Circle K Championship in Tucson, Ariz., in mid-March.

Until then, she won’t be idle. Her intense lobbying in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the Interstitial Cystitis Assn. will continue. And Myers is beginning a book on her battle with the disease.

“What I’ve gone through in the past year just adds another chapter,” she said.